Something that occurs to me: the new designs may be underestimating just how flexible a class needs to be to be viable when being as fragile as mages and priests are. Pretty much the entire reason why warriors and the more martial hybrid classes are viable in the early- and mid-game is because they can afford to blunder into unexpected situations and rely on their brute force to see them clear. When you don't have brute force, you need an awful lot of abilities to make up for the lack.